Multitasking vs. Continuous Partial Attention – Which of these two
forms of time management should you look for in an employee?
A non-representative scan of several leading job boards reveals a fact that is hardly
surprising: all employers want their employees to multi-task. It seems as though multitasking is a job requirement for just about every knowledge worker regardless of
industry or position. One might think that if every employer seeks a multi-tasker, it must
be an important skill to have. The question is, if an effective multi-tasker sat in front of
you, would you know it?
How can an employer differentiate between a candidate with effective multi-tasking
skills and a candidate who suffers from “continuous partial attention”? How can one
measure effective multitasking? To address these questions, let’s examine the
differences between true multitasking and continuous partial attention.
It was once believed that humans should be able to concentrate on many things at the
same time. At the workplace and beyond, we wanted to believe that we could juggle
multiple priorities, projects, and deadlines. In fact, most of us do it every day. Parents
talk on the phone while watching TV, prepare dinner, and babysit three kids all at the
same time. Drivers drive, listen to the radio, eat, talk on the phone, and groom
themselves while simultaneously keeping an eye out for police cruisers. The notion of
getting many things done at the same time seemed very compelling to employers. After
all, this is a great way for them to get maximum ROI from their human capital.
The problem is, juggling multiple tasks is a lot more complex than we think.
While much research still needs to be done, several studies, most notably the one
conducted by Rubinstein, Meyer, and Evans (2001) indicated that when people take on
more than one task at a time, they tend to become less efficient, particularly when it
involves difficult or unfamiliar tasks. Unlike a computer, we can only perform one
complex computation at a time, regardless of how fast we think our processor (brain)
works. Any other concurrent tasks we perform are based on automatic processes;
actions that do not require conscious thought and thus do not require our attention.
That’s why, while maneuvering through traffic may seem almost instinctive during our
morning drive, it becomes much more difficult when trying to hold up a conversation at
the same time – hence, the numerous cases of road accidents involving cell phone
users.
Continuous Partial Attention was a term coined by Linda Stone in 1998, describing a
state of being whereby a person is focused on one task, but his or her attention is
scattered, scanning incoming data for opportunities to take on something better or more
important. Imagine having ten windows open on your browser, each devoted to
different projects. As you’re working on one project, you discover that you can’t move
forward until a colleague finishes his part of a report, so you switch to another as you
fire off a message to said colleague on the status of his part. As you switch to another
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pending project in the meantime, an important potential client calls about a proposal
you are very interested in suggesting to him or her. So you shift to the SPECS you
prepared for this conversation, flipping through your multiple windows to find it. By the
time you hang up the phone and have begun writing up a contract for your now newly
acquired client, your colleague gets back to you on your original project and indicates
that all systems are go. So you immediately shift gears because you don’t want to pass
up the opportunity to complete this pending project. This, in essence, is Continuous
Partial Attention. And you can assume that many of your employees suffer from it, along
with most job candidates you will encounter.
So how does this differ from multitasking?
A multi-tasker is someone with effective time management skills. Someone who is able
to do one task at a time yet switch to a second task immediately when the first one is
done. However, what the difference really comes down to is the motivation behind the
desire to juggle multiple tasks. According to Linda Stone, while the individual who
engages in Continuous Partial Attention is motivated by the desire not to miss golden
opportunities, multi-taskers are motivated by the desire to be industrious and efficient.
The question now is, if effective multitasking is largely due effective to time
management skills, how does one measure it? This is where Psychtests can help. Rather
than scanning multiple CVs for the words “effective multi-tasker”, contact us and we will
provide you with tool to assess this widely sought-after yet often misunderstood skill.
Copyright © 2010 PsychTests AIM Inc.